Pipeline

A lead is a company and a person who might buy, before anyone has confirmed there is a deal. It carries the source and campaign that produced it, the territory and owner set by the rules or by the matched account’s owner, and the partner that sourced or influenced it. Sales development works it through New and Working, records need, budget and timing, and either disqualifies it with a reason or marks it qualified.

Activities on a lead are logged against the lead alone until it converts; nobody has to invent an account to log a call. A qualified lead appears in the account executive’s acceptance queue. On acceptance the system matches or creates the account and the contact, records both on the lead, moves the lead’s activities onto them, and opens an opportunity at the first stage when the rep confirms there is a deal. A rejected lead goes back to sales development as recycled with the reason.

The stage set is configuration. A typical starting set looks like this:

Exit criteria are text the rep sees when moving the deal, and some are enforced: a stage flagged as requiring a quote will not accept a deal without an approved one. Probability defaults from the stage and can be overridden with a reason. Recording the outcome moves a deal to the closed stages; the rep does not pick them.

Beyond stage and probability, the record carries the account, owner and territory, the type, the close date and the currency. It carries three values: the annual value of the recurring lines, the total value for the full term, and the amount that is forecast, which is one or the other by the basis of the owner’s quota. It also carries the primary contact, source, campaign, partner, competitor and last activity date, with the buying committee and products as child lists.

Every open deal must have a next step and a date for it. When the date passes without the deal being updated, the deal appears in Stale Deals for the manager, the owner is alerted and a task is created. A deal whose next step date has passed is not at negotiate whatever its stage says, and this rule is what surfaces it.

Each stage move writes a history row: from stage, to stage, who moved it, when, and the days spent in the previous stage, with the amount and close date at that moment. The system writes the rows and nobody edits them. From them, Sales Velocity calculates how long deals spend at each stage by size band.

A close date pushed without a stage move is caught by the weekly forecast, which stores a line per open deal with its stage, category, amount and close date that week. Pipeline by Stage compares this week’s lines with last week’s and shows which deals slipped and by how much.

When the customer has accepted the quote, the rep marks the deal pending close, and the deal desk checks it before it counts. Sales Manager first approves negotiation on the current primary quote. The accepted version must retain accepted date and acceptance document; its annual value and tax-exclusive net total must agree with the opportunity. Deal Desk confirms the close date from the acceptance evidence. Confirming the booking sets the deal to won, moves it to the closed-won stage and creates the contract; a deal that does not check out goes back to the rep with a comment. Lost requires a loss reason and, where known, the competitor; abandoned is for the deal the customer stopped without choosing anyone. Both move the deal to the closed-lost stage.

• Leads to Work for sales development and Qualified Leads Awaiting Acceptance for account executives.
• My Open Opportunities with next step and last activity, and the Forecast Board in lanes by category; the opportunity list groups by stage.
• Stale Deals for Sales Manager and Closed Won Awaiting Validation for Deal Desk. Win and Loss Analysis supplies the dated loss review with reasons and competitors.